Harley Manning

Harley serves Customer Experience Professionals. He is a research director in the customer experience practice at Forrester and the coauthor of Outside In: The Power of Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business. The book is a comprehensive study of why customer experience is fundamental to the success of every business. It explores the six disciplines companies need to master in order to compete effectively in a world where their customers can leave them more easily than ever.

Harley's research, analysis, and opinions have appeared in The Harvard Business Review, Forbes, The Economist, FT.com, Fast Company, Investor's Business Daily, and Direct Marketing News. An accomplished speaker, Harley has keynoted major business conferences around the world.

Harley founded Forrester's customer experience research coverage when he joined the firm in 1998. Today he manages a team of analysts who cover topics ranging from Forrester's Customer Experience Index (CX Index™), which measures how well a brand's customer experience strengthens the loyalty of its customers, to customer-centric culture. His own research focuses on the business impact of CX.

Harley also founded Forrester's annual Customer Experience Forum, the company's largest event. In addition to its original location in New York, the Forum has expanded to San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and London.

Previous Work Experience

Harley came to Forrester in 1998 after spending 18 years designing and building interactive services for companies such as Dow Jones, AT&T, MCI, Prodigy, and Sears. While at AT&T, he worked for a time in the former Bell Labs, where he collaborated with scientists conducting research in the field of applied artificial intelligence (two patents awarded).

Education

Harley holds a Master of Science degree in advertising from the University of Illinois, Urbana.

Harley Manning

Harley serves Customer Experience Professionals. He is a research director in the customer experience practice at Forrester and the coauthor of Outside In: The Power of Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business. The book is a comprehensive study of why customer experience is fundamental to the success of every business. It explores the six disciplines companies need to master in order to compete effectively in a world where their customers can leave them more easily than ever.

Harley's research, analysis, and opinions have appeared in The Harvard Business Review, Forbes, The Economist, FT.com, Fast Company, Investor's Business Daily, and Direct Marketing News. An accomplished speaker, Harley has keynoted major business conferences around the world.

Harley founded Forrester's customer experience research coverage when he joined the firm in 1998. Today he manages a team of analysts who cover topics ranging from Forrester's Customer Experience Index (CX Index™), which measures how well a brand's customer experience strengthens the loyalty of its customers, to customer-centric culture. His own research focuses on the business impact of CX.

Harley also founded Forrester's annual Customer Experience Forum, the company's largest event. In addition to its original location in New York, the Forum has expanded to San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and London.

Previous Work Experience

Harley came to Forrester in 1998 after spending 18 years designing and building interactive services for companies such as Dow Jones, AT&T, MCI, Prodigy, and Sears. While at AT&T, he worked for a time in the former Bell Labs, where he collaborated with scientists conducting research in the field of applied artificial intelligence (two patents awarded).

Education

Harley holds a Master of Science degree in advertising from the University of Illinois, Urbana.

Customer experience (CX) transformations are huge, complex, and expensive. That's why, as a CX transformation leader, you need to craft a plan detailing why and how you want to transform your company as well as when the transformation will start showing results. In this report, we first explain how to decide whether CX is strategic for your company and then describe the steps that will help you chart your course to transformation.

As power shifts from businesses to customers, more firms respond by transforming their customer experience (CX) in an effort to retain or gain market share. That's a rational response because CX transformation can yield financial benefits, including faster revenue growth or lower costs to serve. The problem: Transformation is hard. To do it successfully, organizations need to craft a CX vision, establish CX competencies, and execute those competencies with discipline. This report shows aspiring CX transformation leaders why their organizations should transform and what they need to do to make that happen.

Forrester interviewed customer experience (CX) professionals at brands that showed the biggest year-over-year improvement in Forrester's Customer Experience Index (CX Index™) from 2015 to 2016. We interviewed five of the most improved companies to ask them what they did to drive CX improvements. CX professionals should note both the customer-facing strategies these companies used as well as what they did below the line of customer visibility to make CX improvement possible.

In the US, superior customer experience (CX) drives superior revenue growth when customers are free to switch their business and competitors offer differentiated CX. Does that relationship hold true in Europe as well? To find out, we compared the revenue growth of European companies with superior customer experience to that of their direct competitors with relatively inferior customer experience. This report details how we did it and provides fuel for a revenue-based business case that justifies strategic investments in customer experience improvements for CX professionals. This is an update of a previously published report; Forrester reviews and updates it periodically for continued relevance and accuracy.

A handful of famous brands have thrived despite their dreadful customer experience (CX). But now a confluence of digital disruption, consumer hyperadoption, and rising customer expectations threatens to take them down. To acquire and retain customers in this environment, all companies must elevate the role of customer experience in their competitive strategies and commit to playing the long game. Winning the long game won't be easy. CX professionals must have a CEO mandate, an outside-in perspective, an innovation mindset, and disciplined execution.

It's the age of the customer, and transforming the customer experience (CX) is one of five critical market imperatives that companies need to shift toward customer obsession. But how can customer experience professionals prove that to their executives? The proof lies in comparing the revenue growth of companies with superior customer experience to that of their direct competitors with comparatively inferior customer experience. This report details how we went about doing exactly that and the surprising results that we uncovered. This is an update of a previously published report; Forrester reviews and updates it periodically for continued relevance and accuracy.

Most companies lack a customer experience strategy. As a result, their leaders struggle with decisions about funding and prioritizing projects meant to improve customer experience at the enterprise level. To craft their strategies, customer experience leaders should start with their firms' overall strategies, which define competitive positions and set customer expectations of the brand. To illustrate this approach, we describe three customer experience strategies that align with Michael Porter's generic company strategies: 1) self-service optimization for cost leaders; 2) proactive guidance for product or service differentiators; and 3) tailored intimacy for segmentors.

As markets around the world continue to decline, credit stays tight, and job cuts escalate, making the case for customer experience will be even more of a challenge. But firms can ensure that the experiences they offer don't degrade — and hopefully improve — during the economic downturn. To do this, customer experience professionals should focus on keeping current projects from getting cut, making the business case for funding new projects, investing in small projects that pay large dividends, and identifying the investments they must make to achieve the next level of Experience-Based Differentiation (EBD) maturity when the inevitable recovery occurs and budgets improve.

Forrester's customer experience research helps customer experience professionals and interactive marketing professionals compete effectively in a world where empowered consumers are getting harder than ever to win and keep. Our research spans multiple channels like Web sites, IVR systems, phone agents, email communications, kiosks, and packaging. We look across a variety of industries from both a business-to-business and business-to-consumer perspective, including financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, retail, and travel. Key topic areas include benchmarking customer experience, building the business case for change, and transforming organization, culture, and process.

The overwhelming majority of today's Web sites suffer from design flaws. These problems hurt the business by making it hard for customers to achieve goals like buying products, opening an account, or using self-service features. To make it easy for site owners to find and fix these flaws, Forrester selected 10 tests out of the 25 tests in our Web Site Review methodology. We did this by putting our criteria through three screens: 1) failed by more than 50% of the 1,228 sites we've tested to date; 2) proven impact on business results; and 3) relatively easy to conduct — even if you're not a usability expert. To get full value from these 10 tests, companies should list their site business goals and the corresponding customer goals and then review parts of their sites that support these complementary objectives.